Another View: Don’t disarm the law-abiding citizen

Congressman Tom McClintock made the following remarks on the House Floor Wednesday:
M. Speaker:
Today the House will consider HR 822, a long-overdue measure to assure that states recognize the concealed weapons permits issued by other states.
This very simple measure has unleashed a firestorm of protests from the political left. I noted one polemicist, who obviously has not read the Constitution, fumed that this is a Constitutional violation of states’ rights enshrined in the tenth amendment.
What nonsense. Article IV of the Constitution could not possibly be more clear: “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records, and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”
It is precisely this article that requires one state to recognize driver’s licenses, birth certificates or arrest warrants issued by another state. Without it we are not a union but a loose confederation.
We are told it is “dangerous” and “risky” to allow honest and law-abiding citizens to exercise their lawfully issued permits in other states.
Upon what basis do they make this claim? Certainly not upon any empirical data.
The impact of right to carry laws – that is, laws that require the issuance of a concealed carry permit to any law-abiding citizen – has been studied extensively, with the vast preponderance finding that crime rates have fallen in those states after they have adopted such laws. No credible study has ever found that the enactment of such laws has produced an increase in crimes, suicides or accidental deaths.
Overall, states with right-to-carry laws have 22 percent lower violent crime rates, 30 percent lower murder rates, 46 percent lower robbery rates and 12 percent lower aggravated assault rates as compared to the rest of the country. Indeed, right-to-carry laws have been so successful than no state has ever rescinded one.
So if the left cannot make a rational case on constitutional grounds or empirical grounds, what is the problem?
I suspect it comes down to what Ronald Reagan once called “This irreconcilable conflict…between those who believe in the sanctity of individual freedom and those who believe in the supremacy of the state.”
Years ago, I had the honor to work for the legendary Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Ed Davis. During his 8 ½ years as Chief of the LAPD, crime dropped in Los Angeles while in the same period, across the rest of the nation, it ballooned more than 50 percent. Chief Davis invented “Neighborhood Watch” and “community based policing” and was an ardent opponent of laws restricting ownership of firearms by honest citizens.
His successful philosophy was predicated on the principle that, as he put it, “It is not the responsibility of the Police Department to enforce the law. That is the job of every citizen. The police department,” he said, “is there to help.”
As citizens we are an integral part of the laws we enact. That does not mean we act as vigilantes – but it does mean that each of us has an inalienable right to defend ourselves and our families from violent predators with whatever force is necessary. If we see a child being molested or a woman being robbed or an old man being beaten, we have a moral responsibility to intervene to the extent that we can.
A concealed weapon in the hands of honest and law-abiding citizens makes us all safer. Simply knowing that there are responsible citizens among us capable of responding with force is itself a powerful deterrent to crime.
That is the well-documented experience of every state with a right-to-carry law. But a society in which honest and law-abiding citizens are disarmed by their government is a society in which the gunman is king.
This is a truth that should be self-evident, but it is lost at the altar of the authoritarian left, which seeks to concentrate all power in government at the expense of the people.
Perhaps the best test of the self-evident nature of this truth is illustrated in a full-page newspaper ad I once saw that offered a cut-out sign, which in 150-point type read: “There are no guns in this house.” The caption under it asked, “Would you post this sign in your front window?”
Congressman Tom McClintock
represents the 4th District of California.